The Butcher and the Wren(4)

“Hand me the camera,” Wren says, holding out her hand without looking away from the tattoo.

One of her deputy coroners, a new hire, rushes to take it from his bag and nearly fumbles it before placing it in her open hand. Wren snaps a couple of photos of the tattoo before checking for any others.

“We’ll get better photos in the autopsy suite, but it is always a good idea to cover your butt and get extra. You never know what can happen in transit. With no ID, we will need all the identifiers we can get, or she will sit in the morgue for months,” she explains, handing the camera back to the deputy coroner and cracking her knuckles. She knows it is a terrible habit, but it is her habit, nonetheless. “All right, what can we use to determine the time of death?”

Wren looks up at her two young mentees, and immediately their faces drain of color.

The first stumbles to convey what he obviously knows. “Um, well, there is lividity …”

He leans forward and gestures to the red face of Jane Doe.

Wren smirks and nods. “Yes, we see that. How about a less obvious method?”

She knows he is smart. He isn’t quick on his feet quite yet, but he knows what needs to be done. Speed will come in time. Soon he won’t even think before he acts at a crime scene or back at the office.

He runs a hand through his black hair in a slightly anxious way, and offers, “Rectal temperature?”

Wren gives him a finger gun but then shakes her head with a grimace. “You have good instincts. If we were in a temperature-controlled environment, that would be a great answer. Unfortunately, we can’t trust or even wish that the temperature has stayed a balmy eighty-two degrees for this woman’s entire time out here.” She gestures to the stretcher and instructs, “Open up the bag so we can get her out of here.”

As the deputy coroners unfold the white body bag, Wren continues, “You were right with lividity. It is fixed at its highest level, which means we are up at the twelve-hour time frame likely. Grab her arm.”

Both attendants move forward, and Wren nods to allow each of them to hold one of Jane Doe’s arms.

“Try to manipulate it,” she says while she watches them struggle to move it even slightly one way or the other.

“Wow, that’s rigid,” Wren’s mentee points out.

Wren adjusts her gloves farther up her wrist. “Exactly. Rigor is fixed and rigid. It hasn’t broken yet. What does this mean?”

The police officers on the scene are clearly annoyed. They make a point to sigh and look dramatically up at the sky as if they have anything else to be doing in the middle of the night. Their display of impatience doesn’t shake her. If she has to be awake and in a swamp with a dead woman at three a.m., she will at least train some rookies in the process.

The deputy coroner nearest her stands, smoothing out his pants, “Well, it fits with the twelve-hour time frame. Could be even longer, upwards of thirty hours with this type of rigidity.”

There he is.

His growing confidence is promising. With a caseload like hers, Wren can use all the competent help she can find.

“Bingo. And look what we have here,” she says and points to the spree of black flies that everyone keeps swatting out of their faces. “I know there are myriad bugs around here, but this little guy is a blowfly. They arrive first to a corpse, and lay eggs that hatch into maggots. We don’t have maggots quite yet, but eggs could have been laid at this point. This all still puts us within our estimated range. It looks like the killer could have even done this in the middle of the day. Whoever did this is a brazen bastard.”

The rookies are playing the part of captivated students, but the way they both lean on one leg then the other, slightly swaying to keep themselves awake, tells Wren she has lost her audience. Before they turn to leave, a young police officer calls to them from along the tree line.

He is holding a flashlight and pointing it down, exclaiming, “Hey! I got some clothing over here!”

Wren can’t contain the snicker that escapes her lips, as she snidely remarks, “And to think, you were ready to clear the scene.”

The officer from earlier shoots her an indignant look before walking toward the trees. Wren follows, motioning for the techs to hang back with the body. As they approach the area illuminated by the flashlight, a couple of out-of-place objects come into focus. There nestled under a bush is a filthy yellow T-shirt folded neatly, with a pair of black flip-flops on top. A photo is taken before an officer picks each item up and drops it into an evidence bag. As the shirt unfolds, something drops to the ground with a small thump.

“Is that a book?” Wren questions as she squats down and clicks on her own small flashlight.

In front of her is a small paperback titled The Ghouls. Closer inspection reveals it to be an anthology of horror tales. Someone behind snaps another photo, and Wren lifts the book as she stands up. She turns it over in her hands and holds it out to the officers in front of her.

“Ever heard of this title?”

They all shake their heads. One of them holds out a gloved hand to take it.

“Do you think it’s Doe’s?” he wonders, opening the pages absentmindedly.

“Guess we will find out,” Wren retorts, watching him place it into a bag with the clothing for processing.

She turns on her heel, sinking into the moist ground beneath her. It’s with an audible squelch that she frees her foot enough to make her way back to the stretcher. She helps them get Jane Doe into the bag and onto the gurney, taking note of the color of the lividity again before removing her gloves. In different light, it appears an even brighter shade of pink. She walks back to the coroner van carefully with the body and the two techs trailing behind. Opening the back of the truck, she waits for the crew to struggle their way through the uneven terrain and quietly dreads the idea of another unidentified body in her morgue.